


First Step

by Ailette



Category: Primeval
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Established Relationship, Imported, Kinda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2009-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-05 05:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6691927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailette/pseuds/Ailette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick steps through the anomaly to see that the world has once again changed. He's just not sure if it's for the better...</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Step

Nick liked to think that after everything that had happened to him in the past, he’d become pretty resilient to surprises. After all, what could shock you after discovering portals to the past and future, realising after eight years your wife wasn’t dead after all (just really crazy), and finding your timeline changing and randomly erasing one person to become another? Right? That’s what he’d thought, too.

This attitude however didn’t save him from the next surprise the universe held for him. Things had been insane – as per usual – and he’d ended up sometime during the Devonian with only Connor and one very unnerved soldier with him. The rest of the team had made it back through the anomaly and hopefully to modern day  London ,  but they got stranded. Nick cursed profoundly for several minutes (they didn’t have any reliable data as to when or if the anomaly would open up again) before Connor eventually pleaded for him to sit down. He looked so utterly dejected that Nick obliged with nothing more than a sigh. 

He had to take a look at his leg anyway, having managed to stumble over a bloody branch on the ground. They hadn’t even been running from anything. Just walking and he’d slit his leg open. Stephen wouldn’t let him hear the end of this one for a week. Why in God’s name had they moved in together? It would only make the mother-henning and the bad jokes worse when he got back. If he got back. He sighed again, this time not even thinking about the fact that they were stuck millions of years in the past.

Luckily, in the end it only took a little over three hours for the anomaly to open again and nobody got eaten, so Lester might even file this ‘mission’ as a success, as Connor pointed out with a grin. Abby stood waiting at the other side, tapping her foot like she blamed them for being late but quickly broke out into a grin when Connor stepped through the ball of glimmering light. 

“Stephen! They’re back,” she called out over her shoulder. Her eyes flittered over the three of them in a by now well-practised gaze to assert any possible problems before she added another yell, “And bring the first aid kit, will you?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming!” was the rather irritated sounding reply. Nick raised a sceptical eyebrow at her, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

“He’s been prickly ever since you vanished. Can you blame him?” 

He had to admit that she had a point there. However as he heard the rustling and shuffling coming closer and turned to meet his partner with a reassuring smile, he felt his jaw drop instead.

“What the-- Stephen?” He knew he was gawping, but from the surprised undignified yelp Connor gave a couple of metres away from him, he wasn’t the only one. “What in God’s name happened?”

Stephen had stopped still at the surprised tone of voice, a brief look of insecurity flashing over his face and he unconsciously straightened up under the three equally dumb looks he received. It only made the change more obvious, Nick realized wryly. 

“What?” he asked, uncertainty heavily laced to the one word. And he sounded young. God, he sounded young.  


Nick briefly let his eyes flutter shut in an attempt to make sense of what he saw in front of him. When he opened them again, Stephen had taken a hesitant step closer; now looking clearly worried. Nick couldn’t blame him; he probably looked like his brain synapses had just imploded. He felt a little like that, too.

The person in front of them was unmistakably Stephen; from the spiky dark brown hair over the intense blue eyes to the long fingers that were currently curling nervously at his sides, there was no doubt. But, Christ, he looked so _young_. Practically a teenager, but hopefully not that young. He was clearly lankier to the point of bordering on lean, cheekbones not as sharply defined as Nick remembered them and his fringe was nearly making it impossible for him to see the way it was hanging in front of his eyes. The word ‘jailbait’ seemed to be clinging on to his appearance like barnacles to a rusty ship. 

“You’re… young,” Connor pointed out lamely as he stepped forward to stare into Stephen’s face. “Oh my god, you look younger than _me_!” 

Under normal circumstances, Nick might have made a sarcastic remark about Connor finally admitting that he wasn’t old enough to run around hunting dinosaurs. Or, more often, running away from the dinosaurs. Then again, what was the appropriate age for something like that? Nick violently shook his head, willing it to concentrate on the madness at hand. 

Stephen on the other hand now seemed faintly amused by Connor’s declaration. “I’ve always been younger than you,” he pointed out. 

“No, you weren't,” Connor protested fiercely and then turned pleading eyes on Nick. “Professor, what’s going on?”

Nick shook his head again, this time to make it clear that he really wasn’t sure. “I’d say the timeline has been changed again, except that this wouldn’t make any sense even if it has.” Not that it had the last time, mind you. His next question was directed at Stephen. “How old are you?”

The confusion was back on Stephen’s face. Abby instead was suddenly glaring at Nick with just a faint air of disbelief around her. “You don’t remember how old your own boyfriend is?”

Ouch. Nick refrained from shouting out Stephen’s exact date of birth and age, childishly proving that there was little he  _didn’t_ know about the other man. With years of friendship prior to their romantic relationship, he could proudly say that he probably knew Stephen better than himself. Except that right now, he didn’t. “Just… humour me, okay?”

Stephen exchanged a quick glance with Abby. “I’m 22. What’s going on, Nick?”

“We’re… the timeline… you’re not…” More than a little frustrated by his sudden loss of speech, he gestured for Connor to jump in. He was familiar with the whole concept already and probably knew more about the physics side of it than Nick did, anyway. About ten minutes and an insane amount of complicated theories and strings of words later, it was Abby and Stephen’s turn to stare at them.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Abby echoed Nick’s earlier statement. For once, the following nodded agreement was consistent. A rather awkward silence fell upon them, neither Nick nor Stephen really knowing what to do or say next. Stephen was the first one to recover enough to raise the first aid kit he was still clutching in his hand and motion for Nick to follow him.

“Your leg’s still bleeding. Let me take a look at that.”

The rest of the group watched them without a word as they made their way to the truck, somehow knowing that privacy was needed for this. Nick managed to settle onto the car’s rack and carefully pull his torn up trousers up enough to reveal the wound before Stephen spoke again.

“So what does this mean?” He kept his head cast down, effectively making it impossible for Nick to see his expression while tending to the injury. 

“You heard Connor, didn’t you? Once the timeline has changed it’s not exactly likely to change back to the way it was before. It’s going to—”

“That’s not what I meant.” Stephen cleaned the dried up blood and dirt from his leg with efficient and well-practised moves, though the routine seemed rather forced. “You’re going to freak about this age thing, aren’t you?”

Nick fidgeted a little nervously. That had indeed been one of his first thoughts after his mind had half way returned to its rational state again. Hell, he’d been uncomfortable about the age difference between him and Stephen before this. And then it had been only a handful of years! 

“I’m twenty years older than you,” he muttered.

Stephen smacked the tape onto the bandage, making Nick wince in pain, and got up, blue eyes blazing with anger. “It’s not twenty years,” he ground out indignantly. 

“It’s still perverse!” Nick yelled and was surprised just as much by the volume and words as Stephen was. The younger man – really, so much younger – recoiled, looking like Nick had just slapped him across the face. The hurt was so evident in his eyes, they seemed to lose their colour. Biting down on his lower lip hard enough to forget the pain in his leg for a moment, Nick shot Stephen an apologetic look. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Yes, you did.” It was said in such an eerily calm way that it made Nick's hackles stand on end. Stephen had always had a way of easily accepting things as they were, his fast trust in people ending just as abruptly and leaving him hurt and alone more often than not. It ripped into Nick’s heart to see it happen to himself and without thinking he was off the truck and had his arms wrapped around Stephen’s strangely cold form. 

He never could stand seeing his partner hurt. And how often had he promised himself as well as Stephen that he would never do that to him (again)? 

“It’s still me,” Stephen said into his shoulder, muffled only slightly by the fabric pressed against his mouth. “It’s not like I have suddenly turned into some pig-tailed nine year-old girl who’s skipping rope in her free time.”

Nick couldn’t help but snort at that. The dry and completely inappropriate humour in situations like these; it really was still Stephen. Possessively, he tightened his embrace and sunk his nose into Stephen’s silky head of hair, revelling in the familiar smell of lime, wilderness, coffee and something that was just _Stephen_.

“Thank God for small mercies,” he said, far more lightly than he felt. They just stood like this, refusing to think about or acknowledge the world for just a few more stolen moments with the other. 

“I will freak about the age thing,” Nick finally admitted, albeit rather unnecessarily. “I’ll bitch and moan about it endlessly, but I don’t want to give you up either. I’m too selfish for that. So… If you want to do yourself a favour, break up with me now and spare yourself the frustration.”

Irritated but too comfortable in Nick's arms to move away even a centimetre, Stephen contented himself with purposely stepping on Nick's uninjured foot to get his annoyance across. “Like I’m not used to frustration when it comes to you. I’m not going anywhere.”

The thought that this was wrong still echoed within Nick’s head, but the confident words helped push them just a little further back already. And, for the first time since he’d stepped into this newly changed life, he smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally posted at http://ailette.livejournal.com/41104.html)  
> Beta:fififolle  
> A/N: The bunnies in this fandom are endless, it seems. :o This was written for prompt #3 - Jump Rope at story_lottery . It only has a real title beause fififolle is all knowing. *nods*


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